Anthony Cody makes clear how teaching has been redefined and degraded by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.
March is the month when teaching ends and test prep begins.
Federal education policy is a disaster.
The Bush-Obama agenda has de skilled teachers and made testing the most important aspect of US education.
Cody quotes teachers at length. One says:
“I wish you could hear my colleagues telling me “they don’t mind this” as it gets kids “ready” or solves them having to plan actual learning. They’ve been so de-skilled they don’t even feel the connection to instructional leadership. To them the school is a rote drill factory.
“The teaching profession has been redefined. A teacher is now the manager of a workbook drill. No projects, no model making, no literature, no research, no discovery. The planning you do is taking prefab programs and administering them. Sort of as if you were giving a test like the state test ALL the TIME. Room empty, pencils out, bubble. All things arranged around test prep. No themes, no critical thinking. Really! Not to get Biblical but it really fits – they know not what they do. Because they don’t, we are talking about folks that are responding to what their perception is – they perceive this to be what’s required.”
This is not education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Heck our school stopped teaching in September, it’s test prep year round. I kid you not.
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Sadly true.
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A Tweet to Copy and Paste:
NCLB & Obama’s #RaceToTheTop
Along with #CommonCore
Are destroying public education & demonizing America’s teachers
http://bit.ly/1keQ4ME
I saw this happening with the newer, younger teachers who started teaching before I retired. The colleges where they earned their teaching credentials changed and were not focusing on the same skills that led to powerful teaching but to test prep—not grammar, not spelling, not critical thinking, not problems solving.
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The de-skilling of teachers is a major part of the project of so-called education reform, and is a culmination of Frederick Winslow Taylor’s theories and practice of (so-called) scientific management, now being applied to the classroom with the advent of digitalization.
As Peter Drucker wrote, “That which can be measured, can be managed.” Thus, the forced march of data-driven instruction as a method of command and control (and, of course, as a profit center).
Taylor started out by breaking down the work of skilled machinists into its component operations and motions, including detailed time-motion studies that determined how long a task or production run should take. His results were then applied throughout industry, and eventually migrated off the factory floor and into the office, completely removing individual judgement, craft and autonomy from production.
With “testing as curriculum,” – which is what Common Core is a mask for – the removal of individual judgement, craft and autonomy, accompanied by the threats and intimidation necessary to put it into effect, is increasingly the lot of the classroom teacher. An educational landscape littered with closed schools, destroyed careers and loss of democratic feedback is euphemized as “creative destruction” and “disruptive innovation.”
If Bill Gates has his way – and precious few seem capable of refusing his money – teachers will shortly be little more than overseers of digital workshops, as children click on multiple choice answers and Pearson’s proprietary algorithms assess their production. Teachers, after thousands of years of practicing their face-to-face craft, will have been reduced to shop foremen/women, directing blank-faced children to their future McJobs.
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I remember a class like that in 9th grade. About 60 kids working in silence. It was called “study hall”.
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How much actual teaching per school year is adequate?
Adequate to show 9 months worth of academic growth?
9 months of instruction is no longer 9 months of growth.
Recognized achievement tests yield Standard Scores and Grade Equivalent Scores based on a 9 month school year of instruction. With current loss of instruction, and testing is NOT teaching, where do we draw the line? Where and when do we say our kids are not being taught? When is 7 or 6 months enough? When is testing & testPrep for 3 months too much.
Across years of lost instructional time, a 12th grader would potentially lose years of learning.
How can we expect kids to learn the content we are testing, grading kids, firing teachers, labeling schools and states?
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I would argue that for many test prep starts as young as preschool and kindergarten.
” But after my child’s first few days of school, I realized, with dismay, that yes indeed the school’s drive to improve reading scores meant collecting data in measurable ways. My daughter is in kindergarten. She loves her teacher and her teacher obviously loves her and her job. I trust her teacher.
But you see, I started teaching before No Child Left Behind when teachers were allowed to be the actual experts when it came to teaching. Teachers read professional books, observed each other and were constantly reflecting on best practice. Now the federal government has mandated to the states, who have mandated to the districts, who have mandated to the schools what learning looks like. In my recent experience as a teacher, only over a year ago, all we did during collaboration and professional development was look at “objective” and measurable data; it is easy to see how data collection in the name of learning has taken over the learning environment. In kindergarten classes across this country kids are asked to recall words in isolation frequently, as well as take computerized tests to assess their letter recognition, fluency, and site words.”
http://unitedoptout.com/teaching-to-the-test-in-suburbia/
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“. . . all we did during collaboration and professional development was look at “objective” and measurable data. . . ”
In other words it’s been a waste of time considering that the “data” you looked at, by definition, was/is completely invalid.
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YUP.
Bear in mind, however, that throughout the year, kids will now be using the second generation of Common-Core-Aligned curriculum materials–the ones that don’t just have a Common Core label on the cover and an accompanying correlation document, as the first generation did. These materials have been created by a process like this:
Create a spreadsheet with a list of the standards in the first column and a list of the places where each standard is “covered” in the next. Forget about curricular coherence. Follow the standards slavishly. Treat the standards as a curriculum outline.
Model all your activities and exercises on questions from the new national tests.
In other words, do test prep ALL THE TIME. Turn your regular curriculum into test prep as well because THE TEST IS ALL THAT MATTERS. It will decide what schools remain open, what teachers get retained, what teachers get raises, what kids move on to the next grade, what kids graduate, and, with the Coring of the SAT, what kids will go to college and have a shot at a middle-class life. The test is how your students will be measured. Your job, your pay, and even the continued existence of your school depend upon it. And it’s all that matters for your students, in the end.
Professional PR organizations like the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation often make the claim that the actual amount of time spent taking standardized tests isn’t that great.
But the tests basically turn the entire school year into test prep. It’s all testing, all the time. If you doubt that, attend any teacher training or data chat being held in K-12 public schools in the United States today.
BTW, the last fad in education deform agnology is for deformers to come out in opposition to “too much testing.” What that means is “People hate these tests. So let’s say that we oppose ‘too much testing’ and need to get the amount of testing right. And what will be the ‘right amount’ of testing? Why, of course, the amount of testing that we wanted to begin with.”
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“In other words, do test prep ALL THE TIME. Turn your regular curriculum into test prep as well because THE TEST IS ALL THAT MATTERS. It will decide what schools remain open, what teachers get retained, what teachers get raises, what kids move on to the next grade, what kids graduate, and, with the Coring of the SAT, what kids will go to college and have a shot at a middle-class life. The test is how your students will be measured. Your job, your pay, and even the continued existence of your school depend upon it. And it’s all that matters for your students, in the end.”
And who tests the test?
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One group that has done an amazing job of fighting this testing insanity is United Opt Out. They need your financial support as they get ready to take action at the end of March. Please donate!
http://www.gofundme.com/3tfk94/
And, Dr. Sahlberg will be here at the end of March for the United Opt Out event to help us understand what quality learning, equity and strong public schools look like. We are very lucky that he is willing to come for a much reduced price. Please help us get him here too. We promise to share with everyone what he has to tell us!
http://www.gofundme.com/64kf90
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A conversation I recently overheard between my daughter and her friend, both serious students:
“Mr. Smith did a great job drilling us for AP US History.”
“I know, he got good scores, lots of 4s and 5s.”
“Yeah, but we really didn’t learn anything.”
From the mouths of babes.
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And administration wonders why I refuse to teach AP.
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I hear ya, Duane.
But some of us AP teachers do try to do more than a drill and kill test sweatshop.
I hate the AP exam, but love having the time (year long course not one semester) and lack of state mandated “accountability” regime. However RTTFlop is forcing benchmarking and “assessments of learning” on AP, also.
Sigh.
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This also applies to AP assembly-line courses. Time to Opt out of AP to create more meaningful courses. Boycott the College Board-Pearson behemoth!
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I abandoned AP for my subject in 2008. Every AP workshop I attended was simply test-taking strategies, and my course was an unpleasant Campbell’s Law experience of the tail wagging the dog.
Instead, I teach my upper level classes as concurrent, dual enrollment courses through an arrangement with a state university. Students can get transferrable college credits, I retain a high level of autonomy, and the emphasis is back where it belongs – on the experience of taking the course rather than on a canned test.
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Alan,
Sounds wonderful!
As I said above, I do try to de emphasize the AP test and focus on content and alignment with what I know will be covered/done if first year Bio at most of our local universities.
However, AP is becoming, more and more, about the score of the stupid test.
Any tips/suggestions on beginning such a program?
Thank you,
Ang
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I knew I was done with AP (for my subject, Latin) when the workshop leader kept cheerfully saying “AP test prep begins in Latin 1.”
As for dual-credit programs with universities, I would check with the universities, colleges, and community colleges in your state to see if such programs and arrangements already exist. They are growing in popularity.
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I’m not sure what the right amount of testing is since they seem to ignore what the results tell. Grow up in an enriched environment and you will excel. Grow up in an impoverished environment and you will struggle. In high socioeconomic communities, you can get parents arguing over why their elementary school’s reading scores have only 97% of the students proficient when the school across town has 98% proficient. Never mind that margin of error wipes out any statistical difference. That other school is doing something that my kid doesn’t get to experience. In low socioeconomic communities parents are tired of hearing how deficient their children are especially in communities with a “make do” philosophy that are functioning. There is no question that they are under resourced in comparison to higher socioeconomic communities. In many cases the community itself is under resourced when it comes to public services and certainly when it comes to extra amenities. Retire all yearly rank order testing. Test only enough to understand where the system needs to be upgraded. These tests should not be used to judge individual schools, teachers, or children. Evaluation of schools, teachers, and students is an in house process for the sole purpose of determining how to help schools and individuals improve, not as a manipulative and punitive weapon designed to weed out the “bad apples.”
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Regents come out with new recommendations including no more than 2% of all class time should be spent on test prep (everything is so amazingly measurable):
“The Regents also recommended that school districts limit the amount of time students can spend on locally selected standardized tests, which are used to determine growth scores for the state’s new teacher evaluations. Cuomo’s group made the same suggestion, arguing that schools should spend no more than 1 percent of instructional time on state exams, no more than 1 percent on local tests and no more than 2 percent on test prep.”
For more on the new recommendations: http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2014/03/8541721/cuomos-common-core-panel-releases-familiar-recommendations
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LOL. When the curriculum has been remade so that IT IS TEST PREP, such recommendations are meaningless.
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Does anyone buy this PR?
Can you imagine a teacher meeting the test standards but being docked for spending too much time preparing specifically for the test?
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precisely
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It’s typical of the current marriage of bureaucratic (non) thinking and digital arrogance: these people actually seem to believe that not a single sparrow can fall without it being noted on a ledger somewhere.
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This article is on point. But, I disagree with this quote, ” March is the month when teaching ends and test prep begins…” It is definitely test prep year round. Add the infamous SLO to this and teachers are giving work specifically designed to amass the necessary “data” to complete their SLO’s (on which their evaluations depend). And by the time they do their beginning of the year “baseline” data, there is a first quarter test to administer and when that is done, it is time for the next quarter’s SLO progress report and so on until the almighty high stakes test prep begins. And then there are the PD’s giving teacher cookie cutter step by step procedures to follow in their “teaching”… Just yesterday a frustrated 2nd grade teacher showed me something she was giving to the students only because as she said, “It is mandated that I have hard data as supposed evidence of learning… what ever happened to real education!” March is the month that Pearson lives for… when “Kaching” the profits come rolling in.
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It’s test-prep year-round for me- especially since I teach English II. I don’t have time for projects. My students can’t do research with any predictability now that tests have to be done online. The computers are monopolized by test-takers. I am sick of having to teach so much informational text that is not really my content area. My students miss fiction. I counted up the short stories that I have taught this year and am at 10. That seems low, but I’m glad that at least I could do this much.
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Today my students and I had to participate in a district-wide survey. I had 53 questions, at least 20 of which asked about “data.” On the short answer portion of the survey, I wrote that the focus on data meant that we don’t focus on people.
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Great response!
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